Posted on 10/12/2007 2:45:46 PM PDT by knighthawk
Identity and multiculturalism is back on the Dutch agenda. The beginning of the year saw a full-blown row over politicians with dual nationalities. The right-wing politician Geert Wilders claimed their divided loyalties were not compatible with holding a position in office.
The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) has responded by publishing a report titled "Identification with the Netherlands", the contents of which are at odds with Mr Wilders' stance.
The report wants to refresh the debate and help migrants identify with the Netherlands whether under two passports or one. It says we can't look to the past and are calling for a stricter anti-discrimination policy.
Even royalty has been speaking out. Argentinian-born Princess Maxima said after seven years of searching, she has not found a Dutch identity. So just when the immigration issue seemed to have settled down everyone seems to be talking about it again.
But this forward thinking can't ignore what's gone before.The Netherlands has often been regarded as one of the most ambitious European countries when it comes to implementing multicultural policies.
The Dutch government has made a big effort to provide services for the one million Muslim population from schooling, to housing, to TV stations. The policies were adopted to conciliate non-Muslim Dutch and Muslims, but electoral upheaval and political assassinations have followed its wake; the shocking political murders of the populist and anti-Islamic politician Pim Fortuyn by an animal rights activist in 2002 and, more recently, the public murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Moroccan-Dutch Islamist.
The most common argument made by both Dutch and outside observers is that these murders marked the failure of Dutch tolerance and of Dutch multiculturalism in the face of Islamist violence.
So after so much effort why has the Dutch model apparently failed?
Tell us what you think
The Dutch are again facing an identity crisis and have reconsidered their society's essential principles. Recent integration policies now emphasise the importance of the Dutch language, the primary concepts of Western democracy and liberal achievements such as women's and gay rights.
Is this helping integration? Is multiculturalism working? Has the Dutch government encouraged inclusion or exclusion? Should they be more like the US; united under one constitution, one flag? What is the answer to our integration problems?
Put your point or question to our expert panel by Thursday 17 October as Amsterdam Forum prepares the multicultural debate.
It also became very obvious last month when police in Utrecht put elderly people behind a fence to protect them from young Moroccan criminals, who robbed the elderly people during ramadan (during ramadan crime is twice as high!). Police and politicians rather put the fences then to arrest the criminals.
Also yesterday a Moroccan 16 year old kid was stabbed to death by an 14 year old Turk, this triggered a total war of words on the internet between Moroccans and Turks.
The multicultural society is a total failure.
Ping
Are you kidding? Pull head from butt and take a peek.
‘Public Broadcaster in Hands of Radical Muslims’
THE HAGUE, 13/10/07 - Radical Muslims have taken control of the Dutch Muslim Broadcaster (NMO). At least three of the public broadcaster’s eight directors are extremely controversial, according to TV programme Nova.
Until recently, the Netherlands had two Islamic public broadcasters: the moderate NMO and the orthodox Dutch Islamic Broadcasting Organisation (NIO). Media watchdog Commissariaat voor de Media demanded that the two would merge so that the Islamic faith would have a single representative body in the public system. But according to Nova, this resulted in NIO staging a coup of NMO.
NMO has 2.5 transmission hours on TV each week. Following the alleged coup NMO now consists of eight directors, all of them representing orthodox currents. The representatives of the liberal Alevitic and Ahmadiyya currents, who chiefly ran NMO until recently, have been kicked out, as they themselves stated in Nova.
One of the members of the new board of directors is Yahia Bouyafa, who “is believed to have close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” as Nova reported. Another is Abdelmajid Kayroun, chairman of the Al Farouq mosque in Utrecht “whose imam was deported from the Netherlands in 2001 for espionage for the Libyan secret service”. Also among the eight directors is Mohammed Nanhekhan, a member of the “radical movement World Islamic Mission”.
The Commissionership for the Media says it has “no indications” that anything is wrong. It will only instigate an inquiry if the Justice Ministry or the secret service AIVD requests it, as a spokesperson stated.
Nova asked MP Jeroen Dijsselbloem (PvdA) for a reaction. He expressed his concern over “the increasing influence of conservative Islam within various Islamic organisations in the Netherlands”.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1910497/posts
If you have to ask the question, it’s already too late..................
“Is multiculturalism dividing or uniting us?”
LOL. It expressly divides, that’s its purpose.
So many liberal thinking people can’t understand that multiculturalism is the opposite of unity, integration.
“Netherlands: Is multiculturalism dividing or uniting us?”
I assume that’s a rhetorical question.
At least rhetorical for anyone but moronic leftists.
Just what the doctor ordered - let's give the patient struggling to survive a massive dose of poison even more poison.
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